


and i have told you this to make you grieve

by kangeiko



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, Gen, Occupation, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>We must be above reproach, his aunt said, and looked him straight in the eye. Do you understand?</i>
</p>
<p>Jaro met Winn for the first time during the height of the Occupation. It was never going to be simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i have told you this to make you grieve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Many thanks to my awesome beta K, for a fantastic beta job. Any remaining errors are my own fault.

_When Essa was seven years old, he came home from school to find his father missing and his neighbours in the kitchen, kneeling by his mother’s side. On the table were piled plates of food, as if for a funeral._

_What happened, he asked his mother, his schoolbag on the floor. Where is father. What happened. Mother, tell me!_

_Ah, Essa, his aunt Laren said, and stood up from where she had been embracing Essa’s mother. Her skirts swept the floor as she straightened. Essa, come with me, child. I have something to explain to you._

_She took him by the hand and led him outside, away from the house. His schoolbag remained where he had left it in the kitchen, its clasp trailing open._

_Laren walked him down to the river, right down to where the bend was sharpest and the rapids the most traitorous. Right down to where Essa had never been allowed to go by himself, for fear he’d fall in and drown. There, on the banks of the river, where the rapids were loudest, Laren knelt down in front of him and explained what had happened to his father._

_Everything was different after that. The river rushing past; the sun beating down; his aunt Laren’s hand on his. It would never be the same again. Later, all Essa would remember would be the taste of acid in his mouth as he stood shivering by the river, his knees locked, trying not to throw up._

_I’m so sorry Essa, his aunt Laren said._

_That day was the last time Essa heard anyone speak his father’s name._

*

It was stupid to think that the Cardassians would overlook a service simply because it was held in Tozhat province. Once upon a time, Tozhat may have been irrelevant and easily overlooked due to its impoverishment, but the Occupation was the great leveller: Tozhat remained as impoverished as ever, but it was now in good company.

“Why would you run this risk?” he asked Vedek Aren, as respectfully as he could manage. He had decided – through residual sentimentality most likely, and hopefully now satisfied – to visit the local temple. Instead of a building, however, he had been led into an underground chamber, with a stripped-down shell of a tabernacle in a recess in the wall, the gemstones carved out of their place-settings. Where most temples had been razed to the ground by the Cardassians, the Tozhat Vedeks – used to lightning strikes and windstorms – had built their temple underground, away from prying eyes.

Even here, though, the Occupation had taken its toll: the entire odd little order appeared to consist of a few nervous-looking prylars, a couple of ranjen, and an elderly Vedek noticeably unsteady on his feet. “A blessing, or perhaps a sermon – those may be possible to pass unnoticed. But why run the risk of an entire service?” He had no business asking these questions. He was a visitor at best, with no rights to these people’s lives, or what they may choose to risk. Tozhat had been poor even before the Occupation; how much more may have their faith mattered to them out here, in the middle of this forsaken little province? And later, after the Cardassians arrived, after they had taken everything else…

Aren smiled, unconcerned. “A man may survive on crumbs for a long time, it is true; but sooner or later a full meal is needed to replenish him.”

An actual meal may prove more useful to the populace than a spiritual one, Jaro thought, but if a spiritual meal was all you had to offer, there was no point dreaming of hasperat. Still, he said nothing. For all his eccentricities, Aren was a Vedek and Jaro a mere transport officer, in Tozhat more by coincidence than design.

His supervisor – one of the rare Bajorans fairly senior in the Institute – had not wanted to make the trip during the time of the Gratitude Festival, no doubt planning a private celebration in the absence of a public holiday. Well, Jaro had no family to be thankful for, so that had made the decision fairly easy. The Cardassians overseeing the Transport Institute did not care who made the visit to Tozhat, as long as someone did, and signed off on the arrangements for inter-province travel. “Just make sure anyone you approve has a good enough reason to stand up to a spot inspection by the prefect,” his supervisor had told him, logging off her terminal. “We don’t want any trouble, Jaro.” On her desk, the holo of her son smiled up at him.

“You should attend,” Aren said gently, drawing back Jaro’s attention.

The man is an _idiot_ , thought Jaro with wonder. “That would be inadvisable, Vedek, although I thank you.”

Aren inclined his head. His eyes seemed amused. “We shall keep a place for you tomorrow if you should change your mind,” he said.

Jaro managed to nod his thanks before making his excuses and getting away as quickly as possible. He scrambled up the stone steps with unseemly haste, suddenly eager to be away from this strange temple and its strange Vedek. A place for him, Jaro thought, disgusted at Aren’s naïveté. Him! He could just picture it now: half the town gathered in the ruin of the temple, with the province gul in attendance, no doubt. And there, in the middle of a forbidden service, Jaro Essa of the Transport Institute. His fellow Bajorans would call him a collaborator if they dared. Oh yes, he would be _very_ welcome at the Gratitude Festival service, with everyone trying to work out how they could report him without getting themselves an adjoined interrogation room.

At the top of the stairs his foot slid across the penultimate step, made slippery with age and use, and momentum propelled him forward. His hands scrabbled at the wall for purchase as his knee folded under him and hit the floor hard, his body jarring from the impact. A prylar was at his side instantly, solicitously offering him a hand up. Jaro waved it away irritably, distracted by the sharp pain in his knee and the slow burn spreading across his palms. He got up under his own power and examined the damage: a skinned knee and scraped palms, as if he was a little boy playing too assiduously. No doubt a sign from the Prophets, he thought, biting down on the obscenity that threatened to emerge.

The stupidity of these provincial little people staggered him. What did they have to be grateful for?

*

_We should be grateful that we are alive, Essa, his aunt Laren had said, her hands in his hair._

_Essa looked up at her and blinked away tears. But my father isn’t, aunt Laren, he’d whispered._

_Oh, sweetheart. We don’t know that for certain._

*

His billet room was in the old technikum, the building made superfluous by the dwindling number of students. The dormitories and prayer rooms had been converted into barracks and self-contained billets, respectively, and so his bed was in what had once been a place of reflection and worship. Judging by the residual smell of alcohol and vomit, its recent history had followed a different route. In its favour, the room had both a window and an adjoining washroom, the sink a converted purification fount.

That night, Jaro did not even glance at the permits piled on his desk, but washed his scraped hands and throbbing knee, and put himself to bed. It would be a good thing to give up the old ways entirely, he thought, drowsy and irritable. What have they ever brought us but hardship? It is foolish to put ourselves in the way of such danger for nothing, nothing at all.

The raw skin of his palms throbbed and lulled him to sleep.

*

_You must never reach directly into the fount, Essa, his father had told him. We are cleansed by the water as it pours over us._

_Like the river? Essa had asked, five years old and trying to understand._

_Not like the river. The river water washes over us like this – and his father had taken Essa’s hand and dipped it within the small bowl of water he had set in front of them. The fount water washes over us like this – and his father had held the bowl and poured the water over Essa’s cupped hands. Do you understand?_

_Essa struggled for a long moment. No, he admitted at last, frustrated._

_His father only laughed. Do not worry, child. There is plenty of time yet for me to teach you._

*

When Jaro woke the next morning, aching and disoriented, the first thing he saw was the cup he’d taken the night before from the commissary. The cup he had taken – without thinking, without consideration – so that he would not have to dip his hands into the fount to wash.

_Not like the river, his father’s voice was saying, as clearly as if it had happened yesterday instead of years ago. And then those big hands were lifting the bowl and pouring the water over him: fingers palms wrists, his limbs purified with common well-water and a simple wooden bowl._

_The day his aunt Laren brought him home from the river, she took the bowl away._

_We must be above reproach, Laren said, and looked him straight in the eye. Do you understand, sweetheart?_

Jaro blinked and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

*

The rest of the day had resolved itself in misery and procrastination before – inevitably – he had yielded and set aside his report.

“I need to find Vedek Aren,” he told one of the little runners loitering outside of the technikum doors for obscure and likely unsavoury reasons. “Run and find a prylar to take me to him.”

The prylar who arrived to escort him looked older even than Aren, but she took Jaro firmly by the hand and led him from the technikum and towards the far side of the town. It was slow going, with Jaro thinking to offer to pay for transport, then re-thinking the impulse, then veering back again. Which would look more conspicuous: being seen in a transport with a prylar, or walking arm in arm with one?

By the time they arrived at the meeting point in front of a good-size house, it was already starting to get dark. The prylar knocked on the door and stepped back, doddering away towards the back of the house.

If ever there is a book written of optimistic fools and the even greater fools who listen to them, Jaro thought as the door was opened, Aren and I should have an entire chapter to ourselves. The young man who greeted him waved him on through without even blinking, unsurprised to be greeting a stranger.

Well, Jaro thought, looking around, if I’m arrested, I suppose I will have company.

It may not have been even a fraction of the town’s populace, but whoever could fit inside the house did so, and with gusto. People sat on narrow benches pushed across the entryway, through the family room and even the hearth. Children sat on their parents’ laps or on the floor, and tall, keen-eyed youths leaned against the drawn shutters of the windows. As Jaro was ushered inside, the heavy bolt across the main door was replaced with a deep sound. We truly deserve all the misfortunes that befall us, to tempt fate like this, Jaro thought, a little disgusted, as a mother with two small children jostled with him for space on the narrow bench. All it takes is for one Cardassian to decide to do a spot check on curfew adherence, and notice that all the houses but one appeared empty. And inside that one house…

“Don’t worry,” the mother whispered to him. “They won’t come to _her_ house.” She nodded to the front, where a pretty young woman had a small bench all to herself. Her hair was piled on her head in an elaborate hairdo, and from her earlobes swung jewelled earrings.

As if she could feel his scrutiny, the young woman turned her head to glance at him and then away. Her earrings jangled with the motion.

“Whose is she?” he murmured to the mother, who scowled and covered her toddler’s ears.

“We don’t speak of it,” she hissed, “and certainly not here.” She nodded at the makeshift Gratitude pillar set up at the front.

Feeling marginally reassured, Jaro nodded an apology. A service in a collaborator’s house, he thought. No, not a simple collaborator (and what did this young mother think of him and his fine clothes?), some gul’s doxy, it seemed, her presence gaving the others protection. And this, he thought, is what we are grateful for.

At the front, dressed in red and looking suddenly twenty years younger, stood Aren. “Peldor joi!”

“Peldor joi,” Jaro said, standing, and the sound of dozens of people murmuring _peldor joi_ echoed throughout the house, picking up as it crossed from room to room. The young mother bounced her toddler in her arms, shushing him as he squeaked indignantly. At her feet, a little girl clung to her skirts and gaped as the prylars filed past, the scent of burning bateret leaves drifting up from the wooden bowls in their hands. Two ranjens led the procession, resplendent in their blue robes, and a lone ranjen – a girl with blonde hair hanging down loose, young for such an office – brought up the rear.

Once the entire procession had reached the front, squashed a little from all sides to fit in the available space, Aren walked back out to the front. This close, Jaro could see that the hem of his splendid red robe was perhaps not as splendid as it had once been, and that the fit was not quite perfect either.

Incredibly, Aren started from the very beginning of the service, working his way through the invocation and leading them all in two vaguely familiar-sounding hymns. Singing, thought Jaro. When the Cardassians burst in and start shooting, that is what they will notice: we died _singing_.

One of the ranjens – not the girl – stood to give a sermon on understanding and empathy. Jaro could see the doxy’s shoulders lift a little at that; evidently the sermon had been for her benefit. Her life, for all its comforts, could hardly be called _comfortable_.

The third hymn was a straight-forward thanksgiving for children, and involved a lot of delighted clapping from the little ones suddenly jostled awake. A reading followed – a poem by Vedek Cetam, over a thousand years old and as pointless now as it had been then, because who in their right mind gives thanks for uncertainty? – and then the final hymn.

Jaro expected a doleful hymn to follow the poem. He shifted restlessly, hoping that it would at least be short.

Instead, the girl ranjen walked to the front. “You may not know this one,” she said, her voice a lot softer than her whipcord-lean appearance would suggest. “Please stand.”

The mother sighed as she shifted the toddler in her arms again, getting slowly to her feet. Across the house, old men and women, mothers and fathers with babies in their arms, young women with full bellies and children at their feet, all stood. The floorboards creaked.

The ranjen raised her arms. And sang.

The fourth hymn of the Gratitude Festival service was even stranger than what Jaro had been expecting. The low murmur as the ranjen sang made him think that perhaps it came as a surprise to the others as well.

This is a story, the ranjen sang, about a young girl led astray by the Pah Wraiths who renounces the Prophets. She leads a life of ambition and selfish desires, and when she dies – fat and happy, and surrounded by a dozen grandchildren – she is bewildered to find herself at the foot of the celestial temple, the Prophets gathered in judgement. Why am I here, when I have renounced you? The ranjen’s song echoed through the room. What do you want from me?

You are here because you have always been here, the Prophets told her. Nothing you could do could make us stop loving you. Nothing you could say could make us deny you in turn. You are precious to us, and we love you.

And so the girl, the ranjen sang, entered the temple, and was cleansed at last of her sinfulness by the love and the mercy of the Prophets.

In slow, careful notes, the ranjen wound her way through the hymn, ever higher with each astonished exaltation until, at last, she reached a crescendo of wondering bliss as she sang of the Prophets’ mercy. It was an old hymn, and so the word for mercy was the old word for it, the one lost from modern Bajoran. _Adamó_ , divine mercy, all-encompassing and blissful, sang in the clear voice of the young ranjen. _Adamó_ , when the only memory of it was in the relic word _adam’ital_ – merciless – used by old men and women who remembered a time before the Cardassians, and who felt the loss of the Prophets’ grace most keenly. _Adamó_ , when _adam’ital_ was all that people remembered.

At Jaro’s feet, the little girl stood stock still, mouth open in astonishment. As the last ringing note faded away, she shook herself bodily, bewildered, then promptly burst into tears.

Aren stepped forward to join the ranjen. “Let us give thanks,” he said, his voice low and clear, “for all that we have. And let us remember that the most important thing we have – the Prophets’ mercy – is the one thing that we cannot give away, nor have taken from us.” He gestured to the flame, slowly carried forward by a couple of prylars. “Please bring forward your renewal scrolls.”

Jaro looked down at the renewal scroll he had been holding and realised that at some point during the last hymn he must have clenched his hands. The scroll was crumpled, the paper spotted with blood where he had held it too tightly.

*

The doxy let them stay until curfew was lifted. The children had long ago been put to bed, curled around each other in a large group in a storage room, blankets on the floor to make a large sleeping pallet. The adults mingled or slept, as they chose. She retired to her room, away from the others.

“She seems to feel safe,” Jaro commented to one of the prylars, nodding at the doxy’s retreating back.

The prylar nodded. “She is safe,” he said. “The consequences if anything were to happen to her would be significant.”

“Not that this would stop the Resistance,” said a voice from behind him. Jaro turned to see the blonde ranjen, her hair now tied up and covered. “I don’t know you, do I?”

Jaro found his voice. “I’m visiting. Jaro Essa. I’m a transport officer.”

The ranjen smiled. “Ah. The collaborator. Tell me, Officer Jaro, did you enjoy the service?”

“I do not believe that anyone has called me a collaborator before,” Jaro managed after a moment. He felt ridiculously wrong-footed, and embarrassed that he had not seen what is retrospect was obvious: the theme of the service had not just been meant for the doxy.

“Maybe not to your face,” the ranjen agreed, her words acidic despite her soft voice. “It is a pity that people have under-estimated you, do you not think? You do not seem so very delicate to me.”

“I am not delicate,” he agreed, at a loss as to what else to say. “I do not believe that I have been underestimated,” he added a little helplessly. Now that the service was over, all he wanted to do was to go back to his billet room, and finish up his logistics report. The permits waiting to be approved were still there, no less for all his procrastination, piled neatly next to the cup on his desk.

The ranjen’s smile was knowing. “My mistake, Officer Jaro.”

Jaro swallowed. The ranjen was still smiling, and it was lighting up all the wrong parts of his brain. She was young and pretty, and her smile revealed perfect, even teeth, and yet – instead of? In addition to? – that, something in her eyes put him in mind of a predator. “Please,” he said after a long moment, “call me Essa.”

“Essa,” the ranjen said. She did not offer a name in turn. “How long are you with us, Essa?”

“In Tozhat? Not long. Another week, perhaps. Then I’ll be returning to Jalanda City.”

“A pity,” the ranjen said, again with that smile, “to lose you so soon. Is there no way your return could be delayed?”

Something of Jaro’s instinct for self-preservation seemed to have become lost since his arrival at Tozhat. “I would have thought that you would be glad to be rid of a collaborator,” he said.

“There are collaborators, and collaborators,” the ranjen said, which meant nothing until she nodded in the direction of the doxy’s departure.

“I am not _that_ far gone, I assure you,” he said, perhaps a little more hotly than was warranted.

The ranjen looked surprised. “I meant no disrespect. Ennat is well-liked here.”

“I am sure.”

The ranjen studied him for a moment. “I have expressed myself poorly. Please,” she placed a hand on his forearm, “let me explain. I meant no disrespect.”

“Ranjen, I am sure you did not. And yet here it is just the same.”

She dipped her head then, and looked up at him from lowered lashes. She really was very beautiful, he realised belatedly. “Ennat is valued because she uses her position to her people’s advantage, not vice versa. Something, I am told, she has in common, with you. Or are the rumours untrue?”

_Above reproach_ , his aunt Laren said, and Jaro opened his mouth. “Yes,” he said automatically, and the ranjen laughed, covering her mouth with her free hand. There was a curious tightness in his chest, not new, but newly-felt. “I am interested in my own well-being only, I assure you.”

“Yes,” she said, mirthful, “that is why you attended a clandestine Gratitude Festival service, to hear the word of the Prophets from an obscure order.”

His mouth twitched at this. “It _was_ a little esoteric,” he admitted.

The ranjen was unrepentant. “We like it that way.” She nodded towards where Vedek Aren was withdrawing with the other ranjens, and one or two others he did not recognise. “Will you join us for some hasperat?”

And then it was clear to him, sure enough. “And some religious instruction?”

“The Word of the Prophets moves from heart to heart,” the ranjen agreed. She dipped her voice lower, intimate. Jaro leaned in despite himself. “Although it helps to have travel permits, don’t you think?”

Her eyes were very blue, fringed with thick blonde lashes. This close, Jaro could smell the clean, wholesome scent of her, the heavy aroma of bateret leaves still clinging to her robe. He wished her hair was still loose.

“Yes,” he agreed, just as quietly.

The ranjen’s hand slipped down to close over his wrist. Jaro felt something in him break open in response. “Please,” she said, in the same clear voice she had sung the _Adamó_ , “call me Winn.”

*

> _"Those of you who were in the Resistance, you're all the same. You think you're the only ones who fought the Cardassians, that you saved Bajor single-handedly. Perhaps you forget, Major, the Cardassians arrested any Bajoran found to be teaching the word of the Prophets. I was in a Cardassian prison camp for five years, and I can remember each and every beating I suffered. And while you had your weapons to protect you, all I had was my faith... and my courage. Walk with the Prophets child... I know I will."_
> 
> _Kai Winn, The Rapture_

*

fin


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